Sadly, relatively few investors will have heard of it – regardless of the pedigree of its manager and a portfolio of blue-chip names – because the fund refuses to pay "trail commission" and so is shunned by many platforms and advisers.

Even so, Fundsmith Equity is celebrating its first birthday with just over £180m under management, after delivering total returns of about 7pc, while global unit trusts and open-ended investment companies (Oeics) as a whole lost 5pc and the Morgan Stanley Countries Index (MSCI) fell by 3pc.

Terry Smith, the founder and fund manager, has more reason than most to be pleased, as he put in £25m of his own money when the Oeic began trading last November. He made his fortune at the brokers Tullett Prebon, after making his name in the Eighties as a banking analyst who marked his own employer's shares down as a "sell".

Although he never qualified as an accountant, his book Accounting for Growth exposed several Square Mile scams, for which candour he got the sack.

But the man remains relentlessly outspoken today. When quizzed about setbacks suffered by some of Fundsmith's shareholdings after the FTSE 100 fell by 16pc in the first fortnight of August, Mr Smith told me: "When the whorehouse gets raided, even the nice girls get arrested."

Looking to the future, he argues that the fund's reliance on companies that produce high returns on capital from a large number of small and predictable events will pay dividends, almost regardless of what happens to the global economy.

It's fairly obvious why nicotine addicts are unlikely to stop buying Philip Morris's potentially fatal products, with rising numbers of smokers in emerging markets replacing those giving up in the developed world. But the reasoning behind other holdings is more surprising.

Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Nestlé are in the portfolio because they own three of the four biggest pet-food brands in the world; respectively Iams, Hills and Purina. Mr Smith claims that many people are more likely to cut spending on their own food, or even their children's, by trading down to supermarkets' own-brand substitutes, than they are to save money on pet food.

Really? I seem to remember one of my Aberdonian grannies fed her cat porridge, but this is, apparently, atypical. Mr Smith insists: "Pets are increasingly important as children substitutes in the developed world, where more people are becoming parents later and there are rising numbers of same-sex couples. Believe it or not, Americans spent more than $300m on Hallowe'en costumes for their pets last month, so pets are big business."

I admit that I do struggle to believe this but Mr Smith follows up with not one but two links to reports that appear to show $310m being spent on Hallowe'en pet costumes. You couldn't make it up.

Less surprisingly, Domino's Pizzas is identified as the "best share in the portfolio".

Mr Smith explained: "People used to say that the cardboard box tasted better than the pizzas until Domino's began improving its product and showing unedited customers' comments in its Times Square advertising to prove that.

"We like companies that focus on serving the customer better because we believe share-price improvement will follow on from that. It's like the Roman Catholic tailor who went to Rome and got to meet the Pope. When people asked him what the Pope was like, he said: "Oh, the Pope, he's a 40in chest, average."

There are not many laughs to be had in today's financial news, I point out, but Mr Smith is irrepressible: "Oh, come on. It's not like jumping out of a Higgins Boat onto Omaha Beach in 1944, is it? Or even the early Seventies, when I started work. The power was only on three days a week and inflation hit 28pc. So things could get a lot worse.

"During the Great Depression, there were periods of calm when people thought things might be about to get better. But, looking back, they realised it was not the end of the slump, just the middle of it. Back in 2007, I said it would be 2012 before we got out of this. Now I think it will be 2015 before we see sustained economic growth."

He cheerfully admits that, of course, nobody knows how or when the current crisis will end. But Mr Smith has demonstrated that some funds can continue to make money, despite stock market shocks. Whether he can keep it up remains uncertain but the first year's performance provides some comfort during these difficult times.